


come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Fluff, M/M, Pynch Week, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 05:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11707761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Adam's roommate is terrible, but Adam knows he's terrible, so it's not like anything Ronan does can surprise him.Or that's what he thought until Ronan came home with a baby.





	come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pynch Week day 7, prompt: accidental baby acquisition.
> 
> I am not rigorous about tagging for mentions of child abuse in this fandom -- I tend to think canon is its own warning -- but heads up for discussion of infant neglect/endangerment.

Adam didn't expect to find the best roommate in the world on Craigslist, but he hoped he'd find someone decent. Someone he didn't mind living with until he could afford a one-bedroom. There had to be other normal, quiet, unobjectionable people on Craigslist.

And maybe there were, somewhere on Craigslist, but Adam didn't find any of them. He found Ronan Lynch, who rapidly became the worst roommate he'd ever had.

Ronan drinks too much. He listens to the worst music at the loudest possible volume. He comes and goes at weird hours so Adam never knows when he'll be around. He never talks about himself but knows a disturbing number of things about Adam that he apparently learned through observation. He has a tendency to walk around the apartment shirtless when Adam is trying to focus, looking like some pagan god of warfare and lust. He never tries to cheer Adam up when he's in a bad mood but somehow makes him feel better anyway. He has stupidly long eyelashes and sometimes when he doesn't know Adam is watching he stares off into space and his eyes go soft and dreamy and -- 

Okay, some of these are not problems with Ronan so much as they are problems with Adam and his clearly defective taste in men.

Nevertheless. Ronan is a terrible roommate.

Adam isn't much for looking on the bright side, but he does try to console himself, after the _throwing things out the third floor window_ incident, that at least he knows Ronan is terrible. He has his defenses up. Nothing Ronan does can surprise him.

So he feels especially betrayed when Ronan walks into the apartment with a baby.

"Who did you knock up?" Adam can already envision his precious, scarce quiet hours vanishing like mist, replaced with _crying baby noises_.

"No one." Ronan's voice is softer than Adam has ever heard, barely above a whisper. "Jesus, don't you know anything?"

Adam lowers his voice to match. "I know where babies come from."

"Do you know what _gay_ means?"

Adam doesn't let himself get distracted by the unprecedented personal revelation from Ronan, or by the funny things it does to his heart. "You have a baby."

"That doesn't mean I'm the daddy."

"Who is?"

"How the hell would I know?"

Adam sighs. Ronan's ability to answer only the immediate question and give nothing away is one of his more irritating traits. It is not endearing. In the least. "I assume you know the person who gave you the baby."

"No one gave her to me, I found her."

Adam stares. Now that he's looking closer, the baby is wrapped in Ronan's gym towel, not a blanket. "Where did you _find_ a baby?"

"In a dumpster."

Every last one of Adam's issues slaps him in the face at once.

"Shit."

"No kidding." Ronan crosses the apartment to the bathroom.

Adam follows, in a daze. He half-remembers hearing that if you don't hold a baby the right way you can -- break its neck, or smush its skull, or something. Baby's skulls are soft, right?

Not that he knows what the right way to hold a baby _is_.

Ronan drops the gym towel on the floor -- given the circumstances, Adam doesn't complain about that -- and tucks the baby against one arm while turning on the sink. Adam is extremely relieved to see the baby is wearing a diaper.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Her," Ronan says.

"It's a girl?"

"It's a _person_ , Parrish. You can't call a person _it_ , you're going to give her a fucking complex."

"More of a complex then being thrown in a dumpster?"

Ronan scowls at him and grabs a washcloth, sticks it under the faucet. "Pretty low bar to clear," and yeah, okay, Adam would like aim higher than _wouldn't throw a baby in a dumpster_. For that matter, he'd like to aim higher than _not as bad as his own parents._

But he doesn't like to tell Ronan when he's right about anything, because: terrible roommate and because: long dreamy eyelashes, so he just asks, "Should you really be swearing this much in front of a baby?"

"She doesn't know what it means."

So she also won't know that Adam called her _it_. "Her first word is going to be _fuck_ ," he warns Ronan.

"Good. She's going to be tough shit and none of the other babies will mess with her." Ronan squirts some soap on the washcloth.

"That's my soap," Adam points out mildly.

"It's hypoallergenic. Babies have sensitive skin, okay?"

"I know," which he hadn't, but it would have occurred to him at some point. Probably thirty seconds after the baby had an allergic reaction. "I want credit."

Ronan huffs. "You want credit, you hold her while I wash her."

"What -- " Adam protests, but Ronan is already thrusting the baby at him. His arms close around her instinctively, and then it's not like he can _let go_. "If I break her it's your fault."

"You're not gonna break her," but Ronan's slow and gentle as he raises the washcloth to the baby's small curled fist, touches it against her hand like he's warning her what's coming. He's _impossible:_ Adam has seen those hands set trash cans on fire and smash beer bottles. They shouldn't be capable of so much tenderness. "People used to have babies in caves, humanity survived."

"Yes, but a lot of the individual babies didn't." It's the neck, isn't it? He's supposed to be supporting the neck. The baby's resting her head on his arm, but maybe that's not enough.

He shifts, trying to remember how Ronan was holding her when he came in, and the baby fusses.

"Stop squirming," Ronan says. Adam doesn't know which one of them he's talking to. He freezes, and the baby settles back down.

"She's -- quiet," Adam says, as Ronan finishes washing her arms and starts on her face. "I thought babies cried more."

"We got her, what's she got to cry about?"

Adam is grateful that Ronan is focused on the baby and doesn't see the expression on his face.

Ronan works slowly, but even so, she's tiny; it doesn't take very long to him to wash her clean. She starts fussing when he's done and rinsing the cloth out in the sink, like she misses his attention. Or like -- 

"You don't think -- " Adam starts " -- diaper?"

Ronan reflects his own horror back at him. It's oddly reassuring: they are united in terror.

"She's probably hungry," Ronan says quickly.

Adam latches onto it like a lifeline: "Yes, hungry, definitely." He's babbling, but he doesn't care. Apart from not wanting to deal with shit, he thinks that would be crossing some sort of line, that it might not be appropriate to change the diaper of a baby they don't know.

The thought of propriety sticks in his head, dark and heavy.

"We should call the police," he tells Ronan.

Ronan scowls at him and plucks the baby out of his arms. Well, it was nice while it lasted, being on the same side. "Do whatever you want. I'm going to find something for her to eat."

Adam washes his own hands before he picks up his phone and calls the non-emergency line. He wanders back to the kitchen while the phone rings and an officer answers. Ronan is holding the tiny infant braced against one arm while he pours milk into a coffee mug and sticks the mug in the microwave.

"Sir?" the woman on the phone prompts him.

"Yes, I'm still here," Adam says, and explains -- over-explains -- the situation. She doesn't sound as surprised or horrified by _baby in a dumpster_ as Adam is. She's probably heard this before, if not worse, and isn't that a cheerful thought.

The microwave beeps and Ronan pulls the milk out, tests the temperature with his pinkie. Apparently he approves, because he fills a teaspoon and holds it up to the baby's mouth.

Adam covers the receiver on his phone. "Should you be giving her cow's milk?"

Ronan stares at him. "What?"

"What if she's lactose intolerant?"

"Babies aren't lactose intolerant," Ronan says.

"Are you sure about that?"

Ronan's face says that he isn't, but he's not much in the habit of telling Adam that he's right, either. "It's this or one of your weird-ass protein shakes."

"All right, sir, thank you for waiting," the woman on the phone tells him, and Adam waves begrudgingly at Ronan, _fine, give her the milk_. He watches in case it ends in tragedy.

Ronan slowly pours a few drops of milk in the baby's mouth. She smacks her lips and makes a sound that may, possibly, slightly, warm Adam down to his core.

"I don't have any officers I can send you at the moment, but if you'll stay at your present location someone should be over in the next hour."

"We'll stay here," Adam says, and confirms the address and apartment number before he hangs up.

"You're under house arrest," Ronan tells the baby. "The pigs are coming for you."

Adam sighs. "Do not turn the baby into an anarchist."

"Can you say 'fuck the police'?" Ronan asks the baby. She mouths at her spoon.

After a few minutes she gets full, or bored, and starts to fuss again, turning her face away from Ronan every time he tries to feed her.

"Here, take her for a second."

"Why?" but Adam's already holding out his hands. He'd been studying Ronan's arms this time, he thinks he knows how to hold her now.

"I'm going to put some music on."

Adam makes a face. "Don't play your crappy electronica," but it's on before he finishes the sentence. At a much lower volume than usual, which is something, but not much.

"It'll make her smarter."

"That's Mozart."

"Music's all the same math anyway." Ronan rolls his eyes. "And this has computers in it. She's going to grow up to build robots instead of being stuffy and regressive."

"Good for her. I'll buy her flowers when she gets a Nobel prize," Adam says. "Let me clarify: don't play your crappy electronica because _I_ don't want to listen to it."

The baby scrunches up her face and makes a noise.

"See? She hates it, too. She's crying out of pity for you and your shitty taste in music."

"She's crying because you're such a fucking square," Ronan says.

"Here." Adam swaps his phone for Ronan's in the sound system and starts a playlist.

Ronan raises an eyebrow as the Clash starts to play. "I thought we didn't want her to grow up to be an anarchist."

Adam hadn't consciously decided what he was going to play, just let his fingers pick something out. But it's hard to explain that _this is my comfort music,_ especially when he knows he doesn't look punk. That's half the appeal; he hates country, hates everything that was on the radio when he was growing up, and it's weirdly soothing listening to other people's anger. "Well, if she burns down a government building I'll post her bail."

"If she burns down a government building _I'll_ buy her flowers."

"I don't see how anyone in their right mind would let you near a child," Adam says. "But you're actually -- " _good at this_ dies on his tongue. "Not terrible. Where'd you learn how to take care of a baby?"

"Who says I did? I'm making shit up as I go," Ronan says.

"You didn't babysit or anything?" Adam asks. "At _all_?"

"Do I look like a nanny?"

"More than you did yesterday."

Ronan scowls at him.

"Here." Adam passes the baby back to Ronan; she eases the scowls off his face instantly. "You use your magic baby instincts to calm her down and I'll use science and research and we'll see which works better."

"By science and research you mean Google?"

"No," Adam lies, grabbing his laptop off the couch.

The baby chooses that moment to spit up all over Ronan's shirt.

Adam curses the fact that his phone is across the room and he can't take a photo.

Ronan doesn't react immediately; when he does, it's only to lift her up higher on his shoulder and pat her on the back a few times. She spits up again, a really impressive mess for someone so tiny, and then makes a happy little noise and shuts her eyes.

He sets her down on his lap carefully, and _then_ he strips off his shirt and throws it at Adam. It hits him in the face but not, fortunately, with the soiled part.

"Put on a shirt before the cops get here," Adam tells him, struggling not to laugh.

"Stop teaching the baby that bodies are shameful," Ronan says.

"Stop teaching the baby to make a bad first impression."

Ronan rolls his eyes but passes her back to Adam. "Fine." He stalks out of the room.

The baby whimpers.

"I know, me too," Adam whispers, watching the door to Ronan's room out of the corner of his eye in case he comes back. "But he really shouldn't be half naked when the cops arrive."

By the time Ronan's back, wearing a ripped up t-shirt with an anarchy symbol on it, Adam is watching a swaddling tutorial. Ronan doesn't interrupt, just comes up from behind Adam and watches the rest of video with him.

"Think you got it?" Adam asks.

Ronan shakes his head. "You do it, you're better with your hands."

This is an _insane_ time to blush, but it's also an insane time for Ronan to start complimenting Adam, so he blames it on Ronan and grabs a blanket.

Adam has a couple false starts, and the baby makes some cranky noises, but by the time he's got it all figured out she's sleeping peacefully and looking, well, mostly like a burrito, to be honest. But a happy, safe burrito.

"You think she's good?" Adam really doesn't want to risk waking her up; his voice is barely more than a breath.

Ronan climbs over the back of the couch and sits right next to Adam. "Yeah, think so," he says, practically in Adam's ear.

Which is just because he doesn't want to wake the baby up. No other reason. He has to sit that close so he can keep his voice low and Adam will hear him. That's all.

He looks over at Ronan and sees Ronan is already looking at him.

"Can I?" Ronan asks.

Adam nods, with absolutely no idea what Ronan is asking him for.

Ronan leans forward and --

\-- takes the baby off his laps.

Oh, right, the baby.

They sit like that, Ronan watching the baby and Adam watching Ronan watching the baby, for longer than Adam can keep track of. He thinks over and over that this is weird, but -- if Ronan doesn't mind and the baby doesn't mind, who cares?

It's not like Ronan is going to leave the baby, he's made that clear, and Adam shouldn't leave the apartment since he was the one to call the police station. He could maybe go to his room, but he'd just be in there thinking about Ronan and the baby, so he stays put.

Eventually there's a knock on the door.

Ronan's arms wrap tighter around the baby, protective.

Adam gets up and shuts off the Sex Pistols. After a split second's thought he finds a classical music playlist and puts that on.

"Poser," Ronan calls at him from the couch, right before Adam opens the door.

Adam has a general wariness of cops baked into his personality; one of the delightful souvenirs of his childhood, of years spent worrying about -- this, actually, police showing up and taking him off to child services. But he shoves down his discomfort, overcompensates with the Southern hospitality that he only managed to develop after leaving the South, welcomes the officers in and asks if they want a Coke.

Ronan snorts and hums a few bars of _Anarchy in the UK_.

Aside from that, though, Ronan's unnervingly quiet. He answers the cops' questions efficiently, volunteers nothing, and he doesn't curse once.

He doesn't ask any questions of his own, either, though he's clearly thinking hard about _something_ , so Adam takes it upon himself to ask "What's going to happen to her now?"

"Depends on a few things," one of the officers says, while the other unwraps the baby from her blanket and checks her over for injuries. Adam has a strong compulsion to ask if he can wrap the baby back up again when she's done; he has to bite his tongue. "We'll see if we can find out who the parents are -- "

"You can't give her back to the people who threw her in a dumpster," Adam demands, and manages to tack on "sir" to the end of it. At least the cop doesn't look offended, though Adam wishes he did. He wishes the cops looked like this were bothering them at all, instead of being another part of the job.

"Most likely she'll end up in foster care, at least temporarily," the officer says. "Beyond that, I can't say."

Ronan comes to whatever decision he's been weighing. Or more likely, given that it's Ronan, he's had the decision made from the very beginning and has just chosen this moment to announce it.

"What if I want to adopt her?"

Adam stares at him, heart pounding.

Another shrug from the cop. "I can put you in touch with a social worker, but a single man your age doesn't have the best odds."

Adam blurts out, "What about a couple?"

The cop looks surprised, though nothing like as surprised as Ronan. His head whips around so fast Adam half expects his neck to snap.

"Sorry, I didn't realize you were married."

"We're not yet," Adam says. "But we live together."

The cops exchange a look. The one holding the baby says, "I don't know if that's likely to help, but it might. You'll have to talk to a social worker about it."

Her partner fishes something out of his pocket, "here's my card, you can call me at the station -- " and a lot of other words that Adam doesn't pay attention to. He can tell when someone is saying _no_ without saying _no_.

Underneath his calm expression he's burning with embarrassment. Why had he said that? It was _stupid_ , it wasn't like they could adopt a baby, it was --

It was just that Ronan looked so _sad_.

Adam takes his time tucking the officer's card into his wallet, showing them to the door. He wants to wave to the baby as they leave, but her eyes are shut. He wants to tell the cops to take the blanket with them, wrap her up safe, but it's not like the baby really needs it.

He wants most of all to not turn around after the door shuts.

But he lives here. His name is on the lease. He has to face Ronan at some point.

Ronan's grinning at him. At least he isn't pissed off. Mockery is exactly what Adam deserves, at this point.

That doesn't mean he likes it.

"You know," Ronan says, conversational, "I've forgotten anniversaries before, but this is my first time forgetting a whole relationship."

Adam bites down on his temper. "I was trying to help. Next time I won't bother."

Ronan's smirk only grows. "No, help me out here, who made the first move? When was our first date? Why aren't we married yet if we're ready to have kids?"

"Fine," Adam snaps, against his best attempts not to. "I shouldn't have outed you, all right? You can let it go now."

Ronan blinks, his derision giving way to confusion. "I'm not mad you outed me. It's not like it's a secret."

"My mistake," Adam says drily. "Don't know how I could have thought that. I mean we've only lived together for six months and I just found out today."

Ronan sits up straight, mockery completely abandoned. "What do you mean you just found out? I've been checking you out for months."

"No, you haven't," Adam argues automatically, because his brain suddenly has a lot to process and this can't mean what it sounds like it means, because that's what he wants it to mean and so it can't be true.

"Are you seriously fucking arguing with me about whether I think you're hot."

"I would have noticed if you were checking me out."

Ronan shakes his head, trying to look annoyed and failing, because there's a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and _holy shit_ this does mean what it sounds like it mean. "Why do you think I like to watch you work on your car?"

"You like cars!" Adam can't just let a good thing happen, apparently.

"I like racing," Ronan argues. "Not oil changes. No one watches someone work on their car unless they want to see them get all greasy and sweaty and take their shirt off."

"Oh, you're one to talk about taking your shirt off, I have a heart attack every time you walk into the room -- " Adam's brain catches up with his mouth and cuts him off.

They stare at each other, stunned silent, and then one of them -- Adam's not sure who -- starts laughing, and then both of them are laughing and Adam has to lean his back against the door. He feels weak, and not quite in touch with reality.

"Fuck, we're idiots," Ronan says.

"Yeah, we are."

Ronan stands up and walks across the room before he hesitates.

He's being so cautious and slow and gentle, and it's another new side of him in a day that was already full of revelations. Adam's heart clenches in his chest, because he thought he liked Ronan before, and now he wants to discover every last unknown thing about him, every surprise and contradiction.

Adam smiles.

Ronan smiles back at him, soft and unguarded, and closes the distance between them. His hands come to rest lightly on Adam's waist, his eyes rove across Adam's face. Adam blushes, embarrassed at the attention, but pleased with it, too. He's not used to being looked at with such devotion.

But he's also impatient, and Ronan has, by his own admission, been looking at him for months, so he really should have gotten his fill by now. Adam places his hands on the back of Ronan's neck and tugs him down for a kiss.

He starts slow, lets Ronan set the pace. He isn't surprised, now, that Ronan takes his time, presses a dozen soft kisses against his mouth, his jaw, his ear, before he returns to Adam's mouth, teases at his lower lip with his teeth. Adam opens his mouth to Ronan's, slides his arms around his shoulders until Ronan has to step closer to him, until he's cradled between Ronan and the door.

"Believe me yet?" Ronan asks, mouthing a line down Adam's throat to his -- fuck, his collarbone, which had never struck him as particularly erogenous, before now.

"You're very convincing," Adam says, breathless. "Though I might have caught on sooner if you ever talked about yourself, or brought anyone home -- "

Ronan kisses him again, a little bit sloppy, a little bit brutal.

Adam makes a noise in the back of his throat.

"Why would I bring anyone home when you're here?" Ronan murmurs against his skin.

Adam shivers, because there goes the last shred of pretense that he isn't completely gone on his stupid, terrible, complicated, wonderful roommate. " _Fuck_."

Ronan nips at his jaw. "You shouldn't swear so much if we're going to adopt a baby."

Adam rests his head against Ronan's chest and shuts his eyes. "Maybe we should start with dinner."

Ronan noses at Adam's hair. His breath against Adam's scalp sends another shiver down his back.

"Okay," Ronan says, "dinner," and then Adam tilts his head back up and finds Ronan's mouth again.

They never do get around to dinner.

-

Unsurprisingly, the social worker decides not to give an infant to two broke idiot twenty-somethings, couple or no couple.

It's for the best, really; they might have space for a baby, since Ronan spends every night in Adam's room anyway ("Your mattress is nicer than mine." "You found your mattress in of a dumpster, are you really surprised?" "Are you really going to complain about things I've found in dumpsters?" and no, Adam isn't). But Adam is a little too broke and works a little too much and he really, really appreciates getting home and having Ronan all to himself. So when they get the news that their baby has been placed in a new home Adam only spends a day or so feeling disappointed and defeated and mad at himself for feeling disappointed and defeated, while Ronan blasts the Ramones at top volume and makes astonishingly terrible pancakes that he forces Adam to eat.

It's for the best. It's what Adam _expected_ , even, so there's really no reason to be upset about it.

But things have a way of not working out how Adam expects. A month later he gets another call from their baby's social worker; she'd mentioned him and Ronan to the foster parents, and they wanted to meet the men who found their baby and let them see how she's doing, and did he mind if she shared their contact information?

"Hey, Ronan," Adam asked, "do you mind if we get to see our baby again?"

"I thought you were done asking stupid questions."

"You're an inscrutable mystery," Adam drawled, "I never know what you're thinking -- " and then he had to finish the phone call without giving away the fact that his boyfriend had crawled onto his lap.

Which is how they end up outside a nice house in the suburbs, trying to ring the doorbell without dropping any of the fuckton of presents Ronan bought.

"I think you went overboard."

"She could have had two dads," Ronan says. "And instead she's getting raised by straight people. We gotta make up for her deprived childhood."

"I mean, straight people are the worst and I have yet to see any evidence that they're capable of raising children," Adam agrees. "But what even is all this?"

"Toys and shit. Stuff," Ronan corrects himself. He'd spend the entire drive cursing, like profanity was a well he could drain. Adam was pretty sure that was only going to make it worse, but there was something entertaining and strangely musical about Ronan swearing for a constant twenty minutes, so he hadn't interrupted. "It's all baby safe, she's not going to choke on anything."

"I'm more worried about her being crushed in an avalanche." He rings the doorbell and digs into one of the gift bags with his free hand, curious. "I didn't know there were this many toys in -- you fucking didn't."

"Language, Parrish."

Adam pulls the Oscar the Grouch stuffed animal out of the gift bag. "Seriously?"

Ronan shrugs. "He knows what it's like to live in a trash can."

"There is something wrong with you," Adam mutters, because he's afraid he's going to laugh. "They're not going to let us see her again."

Ronan glowers. Adam's still learning how to translate Ronan's bluster into genuine emotion, but he thinks that Ronan is actually hurt by that.

"I didn't mean it," Adam says, though the words are clumsy. If a little awkwardness is the penance he pays for hurting Ronan's feelings, that's more than fair. "Every baby needs a weird pseudo-dad with a horrible sense of humor."

"I don't want to screw up," Ronan says.

"You won't."

Ronan glares at him again, but this time there's no heat to it. "I don't trust you. You have a shitty track record with noticing things."

"Well, you have a shitty track record with communicating your intentions." Adam rings the doorbell again.

"Well, you have a shitty track record with my mom."

"Did you just...insult your own mom?" Adam asks, perplexed. "That's not how that works."

"But you didn't see it coming," Ronan says.

Adam shakes his head. "I never saw _you_ coming." Ronan leers at him. " _Don't_ say it, Jesus, neither of us should be allowed around the baby. We're both terrible."

Adam can hear someone on the other side of the door, moving around, "I'll be right there!"

Ronan brushes his arm against Adam's. "We'll figure it out."

 _We will_ , Adam thinks, _we are._

But that's just fucking sappy.

"Bet you swear in front of the baby before I do," he challenges Ronan.

"You're on."

-

They're invited back less than one week later.

"Which goes to show," Ronan says, "some people are even more oblivious than you are."

Adam covers the baby's ears. "Shut the f-u-c-k up."

"Make me," Ronan says.

Adam kisses him, careful not to jostle the baby, and has to admit that Ronan has a point. He hadn't expected any of this.

But just this once, it's hard to care about being wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr.](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/163807151380/come-out-of-the-cupboard-you-boys-and-girls)


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